Learn to look after your employees, the rest will follow (Richard Branson)

A so obvious advice from Richard Branson that I wonder why we still need to explain it and spread the word again and again.

However, it’s a good occasion to add a little to it, for businesses claiming they are customer-focused and wondering why they are failing to keep the promise.

• Giving someone a job and telling him “get the job done” does not mean the person has the means to do so. That’s not a matter of will but of capabilities.

• Giving people the tools to do the job is not enough. There is the tool and the way it’s used. No CRM will transform customer relationship if employees are not in an environment that helps them adopt the right behavior.

• The quality of the relationship between a business and its customers is equal to the quality of the relatonship between the business and its employees. It will never exceed it.

• No employee pays to customers the attention his company does not pay to him. Being responsive, proactive, inventive and thoughful is not possible for those who don’t see and feel what it means in their day to day live. If your company does not care about you you don’t know what does caring about the customer mean.

• Looking after employees does not mean providing them with tools but really caring about them.

• The way a business care about its employees must be aligned and consistant with the way it wants them to care about the customer. Caring about the customer in a low cost way may be ok if it’s the brand promise, not if you have a premium promise.

• Now consider that from a digital transformation perspective : there is no customer experience without employee experience. You can spend the money you want on technology, nothing will happen until you care about the people.